Revisiting the effects of helper intentions on gratitude and indebtedness: Replication and extensions Registered Report of Tsang (2006)

TL;DR

This study replicates and extends previous findings that people feel more gratitude when a helper's intentions are perceived as kind, but not more indebtedness.

Contribution

The study successfully replicates Tsang's findings and extends them by linking helper intentions to reciprocity expectations and inclination.

Findings

Helper intentions strongly influence gratitude but not indebtedness.

Helper intentions are linked to perceived reciprocity expectations and reciprocity inclination.

Gratitude is negatively associated with reciprocity expectations, while indebtedness is positively associated.

Abstract

Gratitude and indebtedness are common emotions in response to a favour, yet research suggests that they are experienced differently depending on the situation. Tsang (Tsang JA. 2006 The effects of helper intention on gratitude and indebtedness. Motiv. Emot.
30, 198–204. (doi:10.1007/s11031-006-9031-z)), found that gratitude for a favour depended on perceived helper intention, whereas indebtedness did not. Perceived benevolent helper intentions were associated with higher gratitude from beneficiaries compared to selfish ones, yet had no associations with indebtedness. In a registered report with a United States Prolific student sample (n = 759), we conducted a replication and extensions of studies 2 and 3 from Tsang, 2006. In the original studies, Tsang found support for the impact of the helper’s intention on gratitude (study 2: ηp2 = 0.20 [0.08, 0.32]; study 3: ηp2 = 0.14 [0.03, 0.26]), but not for indebtedness (study 2: ηp2 = 0.01 [0.00, 0.08]; study 3: ηp2 = 0.00 [0.00, 0.03]). In our replications, we found support for the impact of helper’s intention on gratitude (study 2: ηp2 = 0.33 [0.28, 0.37]; study 3: ηp2 = 0.16 [0.12, 0.20]), and—as expected—no support for an effect on indebtedness (study 2: ηp2 = 0.00 [0.00, 0.01]; study 3: ηp2 = 0.01 [0.00, 0.01]). We concluded a successful replication, that helping intent was more strongly associated with gratitude than with indebtedness. Extending the replication, we found evidence for the impact of helper intention on perceived expectations for reciprocity (d = 1.51 [1.31, 1.71]), and reciprocity inclination (d = 0.66 [0.48, 0.84]), and for opposite associations of perceived reciprocity expectations with gratitude (r = −0.28 [−0.35, −0.22]) and indebtedness (r = 0.17 [0.10, 0.24]). Materials, data and code are available on: https://osf.io/ghfy4/. This registered report has been officially endorsed by the Peer Community in Registered Reports: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100788.

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